Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 13 April 1937 — Page 15

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' PAGE 14 The Indianapolis Times

(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

ROY W. HOWARD LUDWELL DENNY

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TUESDAY, APRIL 13, 1937

A CLEAR ROAD T last the Supreme Court has made the interstate commerce clause conversant with the realities of modern industry. . Yesterday's Wagner Act decisions will loom large in history, for they mark the abandonment—the permanent abandonment, we hope—of those narrow, legalistic concepts that may have fitted very well in the days when manufacturing was a matter of millraces, spinning wheels and cobbler shops, and when transportation and communication were handled by oxcarts and stagecoaches. ~ They mark a recognition of the facts of modern industrialism—that factories of today reach out across state and national boundaries to bring in raw materials and then send their finished products back out into the markets of the nation and world—and an admission that Congress’ constitutional power to regulate and protect interstate commerce includes power to safeguard the welfare and liberties of human beings dependent on that commerce. In the words of ' Chief Justice Hughes, a majority of the nine justices refuse | “to shut our eyes to the plainest facts of our national life.” Hair-splitters may see distinction, but under any com-mon-sense interpretation of what the Court majority said yesterday, almost all of the New Deal's legislative objectives are in our opinion now attainable.

True, no slapdash law such as the NRA experiment was,

reaching out to prescribe the wages and working conditions of pants-pressers and drug clerks, can be brought under this tent. But if Congress has pawer to protect the right of a factory worker to join a union, cannot Congress also protect the right of the same factory workers not to be ex- - ploited at less-than-subsistence wages and for over-long hours of labor? Of course, a factory worker who joins an effective labor union will not need governmental protection on that score—his union will protect him. But he may need, and his employer may need, governmental protection from sweatshop competition. The road is clear, we believe, for Congress to provide that protection. And is it not the same in respect to child labor? Of course, Congress cannot forbid minors to perform chores around a farm. But Congress has never wanted to do that. It has wanted to keep children out of mills whose products compete in interstate markets. And does not the philosophy of governmental powers expressed by the Court vesterday clear the way for Congress to do just that? We believe it does.

g s 8 a8 a un o HEN there is that step which logically follows collective bargaining—the right of which was firmly established by yesterday's decision. We refer to an orderly governmental procedure for mediation and voluntary arbitration —such as the one that has proved so valuable in bringing about and maintaining labor contracts and settling disputes

in the railroad industry. Clearly, such machinery can now |

be set up for all industries interstate in character. It should, we believe, be pointed out that the Court was explicit in its reassurance on one point that has worried some employers. Though saying emphatically that no employer whose business is within the scope of the Wagner act may discriminate against any employee for union activities, the Court expressly added that the law does not interfere with the right of an employer to hire or fire for any other reason. No employer is required to hire an incompetent or keep one on the payroll just because he holds a union card. These pointed remarks not only will reassure employers who want to conduct an efficient business; they also should serve as a salutary warning to union men. Back to our main theme, which is that the Supreme Court at last has brought its economic and social point of view up to date. It no longer stands as an obstacle to New Deal progress. It no longer serves as an alibi for New Deal failures. : The road ahead is clear, as we see it, for the Administration to carry out those much-talked-of mandates of the last election. All but the superficial arguments for the need of packing the Court to cope with today’s problems are answered by yesterday's decisions; and the sooner the Administration shelves that scheme, the sooner will it reunite its scattered iiberal forces. And one more word concerning our own court reform project—the establishment of a judicial two-thirds rule on constitutional questions. “These one-man margins are too close for comfort.

THE BALL FOUNDATION

HE Ball family has long been noted for its benefactions in Indiana. Many Hoosiers were not surprised, therefore, when George A. Ball last week gave control of the three billion dollar Van Sweringen railroad and real estate empire to a charitable and educational trust.

The Muncie fruit jar manufacturer’s donation has special significance for Indiana, for the American transportation industry and for the thousands of families that depend on the former Van Sweringen enterprises.

For less than $3,000,000 in cash, Mr. Ball and G. A. Tomlinson saved for the Van Sweringen brothers the control of their vast holdings. Then the ‘Cleveland rail magnates died. Mr. Tomlinson sold most of his interest to Mr. Ball. The whole thing fell into the hands of the Muncie man. After reports had circulated that Mr. Ball would sell, he suddenly gave it all away. But it is still in the hands of the Ball family, who control the charitable trust. The immediate effect is to relieve Mr. Ball of tremendous tax liabilities. There is no danger now that a Ball estate might some day have to sell hurriedly large amounts of property to pay such a tax. Now Mr. Ball, acting for the trust, is reportéd negotiating for the sale of Mid-America Corp. and its control of the Van Sweringen pyramid. If this goes through, Mr. Ball will have turned to others the reins of these great business enterprises, and at the same time will have kept the proceeds of his venture for benevolent purposes.

— .

MARK FERREE

REPAIRING 2 NEATLY

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES The Coat’s All Right—It Only Needs Repairs—By Kirby

SEE

Wings 1B

TUESDAY, APRIL 13,-1937 - y Talburt !

ERT Hs

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Fair Enough

By Westbrook Pegler

Writer Explains How: Newspapers, :

Police and the Public Distinguish Between Swell and Cheap Murders.

EW YORK, April 13.—The police, the newspapers and the public make a distinction between swell murders and cheap murders, and the current Gedeon case in New York is a swell murder because one of

{ the victims was a pretty young woman who

left a diary and a batch of pictures showing her almost nude. The killing of Veronica Gedeon was no worse a

crime than the Killing of her mother or the family boarder, Frank Byrnes, but all attention, except perhaps. that of the prosecutors, is. centered on the death of the girl. The prosecutors usually pick rover the evidence in a plural murder and go to bat on a crime which they feel best able to prove under formal conditions in court. 2 Thus, the assassin in this place, when he goes to trial, may be chargec with killing the boarder or the mother, not the girl. : Murders are of such variety that it is impossible to state the elements which distinguish the swell ones, but the police, city editors, the reporters and the public know instinctively. A beautiful woman, preferably young, is sure-fire material in a murder case whether she be the victim, the Killer or the cause of it all. Up to a few years ago, some journalists, with the old newspaper instinet to build up a story, would strive to giamourize the most common-place fatalities and creaie romantic mystery out of imagination in order to land their stuff outside.

Mr. Pegler

4 2 a HE corpse of some work-worn woman who had quietly stepped over the side of a ferry would be described as that of a beautiful girl with manicured nails and clad in expensive lingerie, but a call fo the morgue keeper would reveal that she was middle-aged. obviously a toiler from the state of her hands, and wore a cotton union suit. : This sort of thing is not done anymore, for we have got religion to a certain extent, but when we

treatment of the Gedeon case demonstrates. The girl's diary and the many professional photographs showing her dressed in a few cents’ worth of cheesecloth are not pertinent to the crime itself, which is the ostensible basis of public interest. But it would be silly to pretend that the killing is the actual basis of interest. If that were so, the interest would be evenly divided among the three, whereas the mother and the boarder have become

mere background. n -1 n N theory all first-degree murders are equal, but expericnce proves that anyone of a mind to do a murder runs a great risk under certain conditions. If a man Kills a pretty woman or the husband of a pretty woman with whom he is infatuated he invites difficulty, because the police and the papers spraddle all over the case, and the public naturally demands an answer to the mystery. Murders in foreign neighborhoods usually are rated as cheap and, in case of a big run of news and & tight paper, a city editor, after a glance at the unpronouriceable names and the street addresses, may jab the copy on the dead-hook and forget it. The victims are just as dead as Ronnie Gedeon and the outrage is no less, but who is going to get excited and ogle the photographs of some lumpy-looking immigrant girl employed. in a cannery even though her sweetheart blew her down in a jealous passion?

| efforts of reactionaries

"The Hoosier Forum

1 wholly disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.

ASKS TOWNSEND TO BLOCK “REACTIONARIES” By Hiram Lackey An open letter to Governor Townsend and our Rooseveltian legislators: Mark Sullivan, writing in The Times, seeks a way to defeat Indiana Democrats in 1938. He suggests. that Indiana Republicans should vote the Democratic ticket in the primary and nominate Democratic traitors, thus defeating the “admitted majority” of Indiana voters who are sympathetic with Presi-

dent Roosevelt's determination to),

master the forces of greed and in-

Justice.

Roosevelt is working to the end that the wealth of America might be dedicated to the health. and happiness of more than 127,000,000 Americans, instead of the sinful

self-aggrandizement of a few mil- |

lion.

Mr. Sullivan knows that reaclionary Democrats who refuse to support Roosevelt and consider the gratification of the vanity of a few million wealthy people &s more important than the welfare of millions of born and unborn children. will not be supported by a majority of Indiana voters. We appeal to you, Governor Townsend, who bravely took. your stand as opposed to our Supreme Court dictatorship, and to our legis-

| lators who voted in favor of making { democracy a success,

Surely a primary law can be ‘enforced to block this attempt of reactionaries to frustrate the will of the people. There should be some device that will successfully hinder the tireless to defeat domocracy and its justice.

an # un

ASKS INQUIRY INTO

do get a swell murder we still go to town, as the INDUSTRIAL HISTORY

By W. Scott Taylor

Many of our best people are distressed that some Governors are no longer willing to shoot down strikers in order to make good the promises of high-pressure stock salesmen. They are also indignant that consumers are forced to pay the cost of higher wages. But their indignation is directed at the wrong people. It 1s claimed that consumers should foot the hill’ because widows and orphans are dependent on the incomes of corporate stock. No reason is given, however, why one class of widows and orphans should be protected from hazards common to all business while other classes must take their chances from the rents and profits of other forms of investments, unguaranteed by monopolistic price agreements on one hand and underpaid workmen on the other, Why should the promises of stock salesmen be held more sacred than those of any other kind of a salesman? A little inquiry into the history of corporations would be timely. It is said that John L. Lewis is a

| |

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns, religious controversies excluded. Make your letter short, so all can have a chance. Letters must be signed, but names will be withheld on request.)

Communist. Anyone who reads Trotsky’s “History of the Russian Revolution” will be convinced that John L. Lewis is going in the opposite direction. They will come to the conclusion that communism = is impossible among well-paid people and that it would never have been established in Russia if that people—defeated in war, disillusioned and hopeless—had not suddenly found themselves with nothing to lose and weapons in their hands. 1t is not John L. Lewis whom our good citizens should fear, but two other things—war and legalistic thinking. They should fear men in high places who are lawyers first

‘Amendment

and statesmen afterward. . . . Your property rights will be safer, | not only for you but for your chil- | dren and their children if you sit | tight and trust the great men of today as your forefathers did those of vesterday. : n n n CONDEMNS THE TIMES FOR STAND ON COURT By Norman Glenn, Lebanon The Times has always championed freedom of expression, has always practiced it and occasionally should hear what readers have to say of its editorial policies. The ScrippsHoward papers have, in the past, championed the cause of economic and social reform for the masses, and their editors have been looked to as leaders in this struggle for economic freedom. - It is with deep

SPIRIT OF APRIL

By JOSEPHINE DUKE MOTLEY

Let me cleave to the spirit of April When storm clouds sail hastily by And there's always a chance that the sunshine May lighten the mist-filled sky. There is no day so cold or so dreary But what we feel spring in the air. ‘With its promise of blossom time cheery And bird songs surpassingly fair.

Let me carry the spirit of April As one wears a cloak or a gown And envelop myself in its graces When luck’s on the up or the down; Then no cold can quite mar all the beauty, Or misfortune forever cling To my life or my love for so nearby With its promise forever is spring.

DAILY THOUGHT

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?—Mark 8:36.

OMETIMES the best gain is to lose.—Herbert. >

{be in any case displaced by calm

regret that we see The Times using the same propaganda as our socalled economic royalists in its fight against the Court reform. The reactionary conservatives entrenched in the Supreme Court have fought. bitterly and successfully against social reform. The administration must either surrender to this conservative element and give up immediate reform, or it must fight back with strong weapons. one knows that we need now, not years hence, and although an amendment would be appropriate, a studyg of the Child Labor would prove that method too slow. The Times™as stated this fact repeatedly.

Every- | reform |

Certainly the Editor has a right |

to oppose the Court plan, but after using several issues to explain his | own ‘ideas, why does he stoop to | that old newspaper propaganda | method of influencing people's minds | against it? If this needed Court reform measure fails, it will be a | major setback to the liberal move- | ment in our country, and Scripps- | Howard papers will be largely re- | sponsible for it. What will be the alibi for this? We were submerged in that old- | type propaganda during the World | War and it worked. The conservatives subjected us to an overdose in the November election, but it didn’t take. Please have Talburt give the “packing case” cartoons a rest, and draw one about the sharecroppet’s Christmas dinner, or the sweatshop melodies. o un n ” TAKES UP CUDGEL FOR INDUSTRIALISTS By Orie J. Simmons To Mr. Paul Jones, Anderson: In your article in The Times, “Sit-Down Congress Called Worse Evil,” your first sentence contains 33 words, the ‘second 50 words, the next-—24 words, and so on. Also, you use too much strong language to be entirely sure of being cool and so safely logical . . . I have seen strong men — and women—cuss and cry and you cannot reason with them at all. I have learned that strong language must

tones hefore reason can come into any discussion. Very possibly, Mr. Jones, you are dead right in your article. I quite agree that our Congress is no more than human. This was also the case with Caesar and Napoleon. It. is true of Franklin D. Roosevelt and other well-known men. The only point I make is that you present your case with emotion, not logic. It happens that I do not agree with your thesis (evidently based on the premise that industry is the devil and labor is the angel, more or less). I have known some pretty cussed laboring men. some pretty “ine industrialists, and vice versa....

It Seems to Me By Heywood Broun

Undergraduates of American

"Colleges Become More Serious, Alumni More Light - Minded.

NEW YORK, April 13.—A very curious thing is happening in the colleges of America. The undergraduates are becoming ‘more serious all the time and the alumni increasingly light-minded. A quarter of a century ago when a parent was ahout to pay a visit. to some institution of learning the son would tip his friends off that the old gentleman was cxpected and that it might be a good idea to lay off

the rough stuff. : Now when the progenitor announces that he will drop in at the dormitory the chief responsibility of his son is to fake a little local. color for him and coach all (he%:

boys in the corridor on the foot ball songs and drinking ditties. so«-

that the head of the house willy; feel that he is getting his money's worth by sending his boy to col= lege. oof Not long ago I dropped in at a fraternity house in Swathmore to visit a relative. As I stood In

Mr. the vestibule, after ringing the bell

Broun

| # cauzht snatches of a spirited conversation about

John 1. Lewis and the sit-down strikes, but the minute I went into the room the young men tactfully switched the topic to a discussion of the relative skill © of Dizzy Dean and Carl Hubbell. + Without any interchange of signals, as far as I could detect, the little group bv tacit agreement be- : gan to talk down to my level. Seemingly in the mind - of each undergraduate there lurked the thought, “This visitor is a man in his middle 40s, and so. naturally, he won't be interested in any political or economic preblems. We must humor him.”

Hg asbod

ball and into college football. Whenever I attempted = to say anything about the Supreme Court the young = men smiled indulgently and spoke of the lacrosse - team. They thought I was just trying to be nice, and, : in addition to feeling that I would not be interested in any such serious-minded debate, I rather fear they = also felt that I would not be interesting. 2 .8 = ; : ND on Thursday night I ran into the same probe= lem from a reverse angle. I attended a dinner: of the Williams College Club in New York, and, as at - most alumni banquets, youth was not represented very - largely. : The full tide of collegiate feeling seldom hits a : man until he has been out for 20 years or more. : Dr. Tyler Dennett, the president of Williams, made an eloquent speech on the necessity of variety in a _ democratic education. In speaking. of the sit-down: situation he said that college students might have a= better grasp of its philosophy “if we had in the class=: room the sons of both the industrialist and of the: sit-downer.” : 3 Dr. Dennett's plea for the invigorating force ofheterogeneity was listened to with close attention, but - the only truly spontaneous applause came when he : spoke of college football. 3 8 = =n 3 R. DENNETT was followed by a banker who spoke - of financial problems under the New Deal. It was a serious address, without any wisecracks whatsoever, - Palpably the audience fidgeted. Being mature men, they wanted entertainment rather than information. = An undergraduate goes to a college dinner in - search of his lost youth, and he wants to hear amusing ancedotes about how Professor Blitz slipped and © broke his leg just in front of chapel during the icy = winter of 1908. =

General Hugh Johnson Says—

Roper's Unemployment Census Plan Is Worthless; Self-Registration,

As in Draft, Is Efficient

| YEORGETOWN, S. C., April 13—I hate to do this.

Almost four years ago, this writer began jumping up and down howling about the utter bonehead assininity of approaching the problem of unemployment relief in complete ignorance of what that problem is. From its beginning, this column has periodically erupted about the stark necessity for a census of the unemployed. The present occasion is another regurgitation of the undigested census plan of Uncle Danny Roper which can be most briefly described by repeating a recent Times editorial. “Several things are wrong with the Commerce Department's well-laid plans for a nation-wide census of the unemployed. “First. it would cost $15,000,000 at a time when we should be cutting Federal expenditures. Secretary Roper makes it plain that his proposed 25,000 census takers would not come from the relief rolls.

2 2 a

“ EXT, it would take six months to get ready to

count noses and three months to do the counting. In about a year we would have some data, and by that time conditions might be so changed as to make the data of little use. A regular census is due in 1940. : . "What is needed to record the changing and complex picture of unemploymen§ is not .an occasional snapshot, but a continuous moving picture, it

The Washington Merry-Go-Round

There Are Still Brain Trusters in Washington, Notably Taussig and:

- ployment at little additional cost.

Method for This Much-Needed Survey.

would seem, could best be taken through the FederalState free employment offices.” > Down to the last sentence that editorial is 100 per cent correct, but it doesn't go far enough. Such a door-to-door census wouldn't be worth the paper it would be written on. It is just a scheme to make 25,000 jobs in Uncle Danny's political racket. But the employment offices couldn't take the census any better or quicker than Uncle Danny's doorbell plan. » ”n n

O be worth a whoop, an unemployment census must be an instantaneous cross-section repeated every 60 days. You can't get that by pulling doorbells. The only way you can get that is to require the unemployed to present themselves on a single day at booths fer registration—as we do for elections—as we did for the draft. To this it has been objected that not all the unemployed would register. They would if the law required it. :

So far as the problem of relief is concerned, everybody within the area of that problem would register if it were merely provided that no kind of relief or Smployment would be given to any unregistered perIf it is desired to go beyond that, we could take a sell-registration of both employment and unem-

That is the onl way to get the facts really for planning: y

Rosenman; They Have Learned Success Depends

By Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen ASHINGTON, April 13.—Significant is the lesson learned by the President's Brain Trusters: “As ye would be effective, so let yourself be scarce.” Brain Trusters still exist today, but they have learned that the trail of headlines which followed in the wake of Professors Moley and Tugwell eventually brought their downfall. Today the Brain Truster is as anonymous as an undertaker. The two most effective Brain Trusters are still Judge Sam Rosenman of the New York Supreme Court and Charles. Taussig of the American: Molasses Co. Both come to Washington frequently, sit in on important conferences, are noiseless, unselfish, self-effacing. Sam Rosenman dined with the Supreme Court Justices at the White House the night Roosevelt wrote his famous Court message to Congress. After the justices had left he went upstairs to help the President with the message. Taussig has been an enigma to many outsiders. As a business man, his unselfish efforts in behalf of the New Deal are incomprehensible to his enemies. They suspect him of using information he gets on the inside. ; > ” un 2 UT officials who work with him relate instances in which he has actually injured his cwn business by lo avoiding New Deal

support. Given’

o Shunning Headlines.

a raw deal by the Cuban Government, which tied up’ his molasses, he discouraged State Department inter-" vention to secure its release. - i Note—Taussig authored the New .Deal’s youth: movement, played an important part in promoting: stock exchange regulation, trade reciprocity and the:

Jones-Costigan sugar quota act. :

Prof. Rexford Guy Tugwell, retired Brain Truster, is now working for Taussig’s molasses company, and is. enjoying the advantages of being just an ordinary: citizen, : > Business men who deal with him never call him> “Professor” or “Doctor.” To them he is just plain “Mister Tugwell.” Furthermore they don’t look upon: him as a curiosity, as did the Senators before whose: committees he appeared. And they don't ask him for: economic prognostications. : = Tugwell says he certainly enjoys being just “Mister”:

Ba 22 283 : Wor a difference just two short years can make!= Just about this season in 1935, the late Huey: P. Long was shaking the rafters of the Senate with: clamorous demands for an investigation of Postmaster: General James A. Farley. : In June of this year the commencement orator ats the University of Louisiana, Huey's pride and joy, willx be Postmaster, General James A. Fazley, |

AREER